5 Best (Non-Olympic) Things to Watch on TV This Week: W. Kamau Bell and Toshiro Mifune

5 Best (Non-Olympic) Things to Watch on TV This Week: W. Kamau Bell and Toshiro Mifune

While all eyes remain on the London Olympics until the 12th, and Sunday remains overcrowded with high-end TV like “True Blood,” “The Newsroom,” “Weeds,” “Breaking Bad” and “Political Animals,” we bring you this guide to five noteworthy highlights from the other six days of the week.

TNT’s trashily irresistible revitalization of the long-running primetime soap has been successful enough to be renewed for a 15-episode second season, but if you’re already hooked on the new adventures of the Ewings then you’ll certainly want to find out what breathless cliffhangers lie in store in the 2012 finale. Who’s betraying who? Who’s cheating on who? Who will get the ranch this time? What twinkly machinations does J.R. (Larry Hagman) have planned? Where can you download that goddamn theme song? Oh, wait, we can answer the last one — here.

Having helped power NBC with a decade of “Friends” and then having staggered through a season of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” Matthew Perry returns to the network after an unsuccessful stint at ABC with “Mr. Sunshine” with a new comedy.

The network’s so fond of “Go On,” in which Perry plays a sportscaster participating in group therapy as an attempt to move on after the death of his wife, that they’re previewing the first episode after the Olympics before the show debuts in its regular timeslot on Tuesday, September 11th.

Chris Rock executive produced this six-episode comedy series, in which up-and-coming stand-up W. Kamau Bell talks ethnicity, religion, pop culture and more in half-hour installments that will mix Bell’s performances with sketches. Here’s Bell riffing on his favorite topic of race on stage in Los Angeles in 2008.

This Paul Scheer-created parody of police procedurals returns for a second season on Adult Swim on what’s technically early Friday morning. Sheer stars alongside Rob Riggle, Martin Starr, Kate Mulgrew and others in stoner-friendly quarter-hour installments about the adventures of the National Terrorism Strike Force: San Diego: Sport Utility Vehicle: as they protect the world from terrorism and guzzle gas in their oversized cars.